The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Dec. 6 upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which bans the social media application TikTok in the U.S. or forces its parent company, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, to divest its ownership share in the application in the U.S. Judges Douglas Ginsburg, Sri Srinivasan and Neomi Rao said the ban survived constitutional scrutiny (TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd. v. Merrick Garland, D.D.C. # 24-1113).

Importer Incase Design Corp. settled four customs cases on its iPad or tablet covers, securing a 5.3% duty rate for the goods, which were originally assessed at 17.6%. Filing four stipulated judgments at the Court of International Trade, Incase said the U.S. agreed to liquidate the covers under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 3926.90.99 after originally liquidating the goods under subheading 4202.92.90. The importer will receive refunds for excess duties paid on its goods (Incase Design Corp. v. U.S., CIT #'s 14-00102, 14-00299, 15-00144, 16-00026).

Importer AM/NS Calvert and the U.S. settled the company's case challenging the rejection of its 12 requests for Section 232 steel tariff exclusions, the parties told the Court of International Trade on Dec. 4. Under the settlement, CBP will refund duties paid on 20 entries of the company's steel slab imports, and the company will abandon its claim for refunds on another 16 of its slab entries. The settlement came as the result of court-led mediation before Judge Leo Gordon. The parties said they reached an agreement in principle to settle the case in February, pending a review of Calvert's import data (see 2404120043) (AM/NS Calvert v. U.S., CIT # 21-00005).

An importer of dried seaweed brought a complaint Dec. 4 to the Court of International Trade challenging the reclassification of its seaweed “for the first time in 37 years” (Takaokaya USA v. United States, CIT # 24-00213).

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The U.S. conflated importer Prysmian Cables and Systems' claims that the Commerce Department improperly denied its requests for Section 232 steel tariff exclusions with its claim that Commerce failed to "perform certain mandatory and discrete actions in responding" to the requests, Prysmian argued in its response to the government's motion to partially dismiss the case (Prysmian Cables and Systems v. U.S., CIT # 24-00101).

The Court of International Trade on Dec. 4 granted importer Incase Design Corp.'s voluntarily dismissal of its suit on the classification of its iPad and iPhone cases. Incase brought the suit in 2016 to contest CBP's classification of the goods under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheadings 3926.10.00, dutiable at 5.3%, and 3926.90.99, dutiable at 5.3%. The company said the goods should have been classified under subheading 4820.30.00, free of duty, or subheading 8473.30.51, free of duty (Incase Design Corp. v. United States, CIT # 16-00181).

Mexican tomato exporter NS Brands said Dec. 3 that the Commerce Department needed to consider the “prejudice to companies now in existence” that resulted from resuming an antidumping duty investigation from 1996 with the same respondents (Bioparques de Occidente v. United States, CIT Consol. # 19-00204).

Anti-forced labor group International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to reject the government's request for a two-month delay in filing a reply brief in the group's suit seeking CBP to respond to a withhold release order petition to ban cocoa from Cote d'Ivoire. IRAdvocates claimed that every "major delay in CBP doing its statutory duty to ban the importation of cocoa harvested by child slaves condemns thousands of children to a continuation of the horrible condition they must endure" (International Rights Advocates v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-2316).

The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade: